The point that I'm making is that the Communists that Orwell despised and the Fascists are both in the upper 25% of the Authoritarian axis and that their economic leanings (fascist-right or communist-left) are really irrelevant to whether or not "1984" applies well as a warning sign to the rise of Fascism within in our own country. Sure, Orwell may have been writing about the authoritarian left, but most of what he was concerned with applies equally well to the authoritarian right.
For security reasons, you should already have this set, but remember to TURN OFF the Preview Pane if you don't want your messages opened up, parsed, and rendered every time you click on them. This prevents web bugs and other malicious embedded data from being run just as you look through your list of messages.
Of course the left wing in academia got to write the history books after WW II. So "Fascism" is now defined as "extreme right-wing-ism".
Well, you could also look into works written by Fascists before the end of WW2. Benito Mussolini has some interesting things to say about the term which he coined. In many ways, Fascism as a philosophy was a denial of Socialism. The American Heritage dictionary defines Fascism as "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Another point for the right-wing is the complicity of many German companies in the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany. As Hitler sold it to the conspirators, "Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality." In other words, Hitler was of the opinion like Mussolini that democracy led inevitably to socialism and the two must be stopped together.
Similarly the militarists in Japan were heavily in bed with the nation's major monopolies, the zaibatsu. No contract was exclusive, though, and many of the companies had to compete with each other including fending off or losing to newcomers who weren't owned by family dynasties like Nissan. The militarists behind Showa Japan were virulently anti-Communist and rejected international law as a European/American invention. The late '20s and early '30s saw waves of arrests of leftist thinkers in Japan.
There's only one major difference between Facist dictatorships and Communist dictatorships -- does the government own and control all industry (Communist) or is it controlled by a few private citizens who are close friends with the administration (Facist)? The methods of control and the usurping of democracy work the same no matter what econmics lie behind your totalitarian system whether we arrive there through bloody revolution like the Soviets or warmongering, security obsession like the Nazis.
(Yeah, yeah, f--- Godwin's Law. Remove the racist purges and replace zealous worship with apathetic inaction by the masses and you've got a good model of where we could be going if Bush were honestly an evil man instead of being mostly misguided. Read German history. The parallels are terrifying, and yet reassuring in that we did not step off that chasm that presented itself so many times.)
I forgot to mention that whatever part of my brain controls my motor skills in the moring is very good at deciding to put me back into bed and pull the covers over my head while I'm literally screaming at myself in my head, "No! What are you doing? Get the fuck up and... Not the sheets -- oh, dammit. ZZZZZZ..."
Nah. Wouldn't work -- I'm pretty fast despite being only semi-conscious. It'd only get as far as "Hey, Jackass." before getting knocked out and it would eventually be meaningless noise in my brain.
I am tempted, however, to buy one of those puzzle clocks that someone else pointed out, though the idea of trying to wire a game of Simon and an alarm clock together is just so incredibly tempting.
Now I've trained myself pretty well to snooze rather than disable the alarm, but the walk across the room is helpful because it means that even getting up to hit snooze wakes me up a little.
Ah, now this doesn't work for me anymore and hasn't for years. I really noticed it when in one college dorm room, I had to roll-over, hop down from a best that was elevated to mid-rib cage height onto my right leg, tap the snooze button, and hop back up into bed with one leg to continue sleeping for the next 7 minutes. I once did this for over 90 minutes without remembering more than two instances of being awoken. I autopiloted the rest.
In my next place of residence, I slept in a lofted area with my alarm clock below me. I trained myself accidentally to be able to sit up, grab a wooden sword, and stab the button below me without fully gaining consciousness. In my current residence, I once hit the snooze button (by getting up and walking) for over three hours.
It's a little frightening to realize just how much we are capable of without conscious thought.
Much like dieting, light therapy requires a certain discipline that many people don't have. Okay, by many people, I obviously really mean myself. I've never successfully figured out how to deal with the period of time where you're supposed to be in the dark yet not lying in bed trying to sleep. (Getting used to being awake in bed is detrimental to dealing with DSPS. Never lie in bed for more than 15-30 minutes without falling asleep.)
What does Open Source software have to do with our (in the average case) closed-source programming jobs going overseas to people who will write closed-source code for our former companies for less money? Open Source is good. At least if I lose my job to OSS, I know that I have full (and free) access to what replaced me and I know that on the balance the world has been done good by making a quality product available for less and with more eyes capable of scrutinizing it for bugs. If I lose my job to outsourcing, I can see that the customer is unlikely to see a reduction in price (or bugs) for the product, and the market is favoring poorer labor conditions. Overall, the world has not benefitted by my loss, so why should I like it? In this latter case, my principles and my pocketbook are both in agreement that this is a bad thing.
By the way, if you're of the opinion that Slashdot readers are fine with what makes Chinese hardware inexpensive, then you haven't paid attention to the articles on the failure of cheap parts, the hidden costs of poor labor practices, and the environmental impact of computing articles on Slashdot. I'd buy non-Second/Third World goods if I could, but there's honestly many place where you simply can't get an alternative.
"This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it--we're talking trade balances here--once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here--once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel--once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity--y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery"
Technically, the name NT comes from the N-Ten simulator for the Intel i860 RISC processor that the designers of NT were using to test the portability of the project early on. NT was originally to be targetted towards "server" chips and shipped for 4 platforms. Calling NT "new technology" was a later marketting revision, and by the time it shipped NT was stripped of meaning (not an acronym) just like SCO is today.
That's because America's Parmesan production consists of manufactured canned powder.
That's an unfair generalization. Kraft Foods' Parmesean may be canned powder, but not all American cheeses are so cheaply done. Sargento makes an.. adequate mass marketed Parmesean product though still inferior to the original, and you can find cheeses capable of rivalling the original from smaller American dairies if you go into upscale groceries like Whole Foods Market or specialty shops.
Parma itself is famous for its dry cured ham BTW.
Yep, and that's currently upsetting a grocery store chain in Britain right now because of ludicrous restrictions placed on their goods thanks to the recent granting of PDO status to Parma ham. Basically, UK grocers can't use the name "Parma ham" to describe real ham from Parma that was sliced and prepackaged in Britain. Unless its sliced and prepackaged in Parma or sliced for the customer at the counter on request, it can't be called Parma ham, even though it actually comes from there! Now, isn't that just protectionist madness?
Straw man. I'm not defending the assanine position of letting a US company patent Basmati rice and register a trademark on the name. I just dislike the EU's PDO designation system and their attempts to foist their own madness on the rest of the world via the WTO. I'm actually rooting for India to overrule the US's madness in letting RiceTec get its way.
He has said however, that he doesn't recommend Debian because of the free vs non-free issue and instead encourages the use of GNU/LinEx.
This goes to the core of what I and many others don't like about RMS -- he dislikes choice. Debian strongly encourages Free Software. Heck, they were founded on the concept of a Free Software distribution of Linux. However, because Debian offers users the option of non-Free Software, RMS no longer recommends it. In his somewhat Orwellian stance, RMS boldly claims that to be free one must not have the choice to use commercial software. He's so wrapped up in the concept that not sharing your source is an inherently Evil idea that he forgets that true Freedom includes the option to shoot yourself in the foot.
I dislike the polarized, fanatical "either with us or with the terrorists" stance that he takes towards proprietary software. I don't like it in politics, and I don't like it in the philosophy of software development. Plus, I don't like how he has only words of criticism and scorn for those who are making moves towards his stance but have not yet fully committed to it. You're just not good enough unless you're pushing for a total abolition of non-Free Software.
He's certainly more civil nowdays than to openly claim to hate Debian, but he certainly doesn't think it's good enough, and that's pretty much the parent poster's point.
If I wanted a good Monterey Jack cheddar, I'd expect it to be made in the good old USA.
What about cheddar? Apparently, the EU decided that one place is as good as another, so why not Parmesean and others?
It's nothing of the sort. Great cheeses are a product of both the method and the local ecology. The grass that the animals eat, the water that they drink, the type of beasts in the herd all play some part in producing the distinctive flavours associated with classic cheeses.
So, it's a complex recipe. I'm quite well aware of the fact that soil chemistry has an effect on the flavor of cheeses. That does not mean that Parma's soil and grass conditions cannot be replicated anywhere else nor that no one else can use the right kind copper kettles or age the cheese the right amount before shipping. I have had genuine Parmigiano-Reggio, and it is quite good. However, it is not impossible to reproduce elsewhere, which is what the EU is attempting to claim. Unless Parma were willing to give a name for their cheese that others who followed the recipe could use instead of attempting to claim the world monopoly on the ability to make cheeses in it's class, it's nothing more than base trade protectionism and it should stay the hell out of the WTO.
You're clearly the kind of person who thinks that Espresso is a drink that's made with two heaped spoonfuls of Maxwell House instant coffee.
You're clearly the kind of person to make unsubstantiated ad-hominem and straw man attacks against anyone who argues with you. Then again, snobs commonly do.
You're absolutely free to sell as much of your 'American Cheese' in Europe as you like (bwahahahahah.) You just can't call it Camenbert.
It's utter nonsense. The terms for cheese and the like are descriptive of the kind of cheese and its flavor. Are all Parmesean, Muenster, Feta, etc. cheeses that come from Wisconsin to be labelled "American Cheese" or "Wisconsin Cheese?" How would you tell them apart? Better yet, under Europe's naming regime, should every single country that makes Parmesean cheese be forced to come up with an independent name for what is essentially the same product? How would you know what can be substituted in a recipe?
Of course, that's the real goal of the European system -- to force consumers to only associate a European town or region's goods to satisfy their needs. This why the EU doesn't even want American to be able to say "Rocheforte-like" to label their goods. It's pure protectionism and all it does is confuse customers. The protectionism is made far more blatant by the fact that Cheddar cheese isn't protected because it was widely produced outside of its original region in Europe before the law came into effect in 1992 while America's Parmesean production was not considered when Parma, Italy gained European trade protection for its own name. The stench of hypocrisy abounds here.
Naturally, though, I'm sure you don't see it that way, what with all of your claims that American goods are "inferior products." However, the basic fact is that many American-made cheeses are as good or better than the European originals unless your doing extremely finicky gourmet cooking, and the American dairy industry can match demand that regions like Parma, Italy cannot, especially now that the industry seems to be slowly withering on the vine due to a lack of interest in the youth of the area in becoming cheesemakers. Now, however, in Europe if it's not from Parma it has to have a different name. All you've managed to do is make your own goods more expensive for the sake of snobbery in the tradition of landed titles. It's madness.
What's next? Can we no longer use the word Amaretto if the cordial doesn't come from Italy? Can we no longer have Chamomile tea if it wasn't grown from Eurasian stock? Are you genuinely arguing that Basmati rice that wasn't grown on Indian soil cannot have that name?
Cheesemaking is a recipe. Is Europe honestly saying that we cannot have Hamburger Steak or Florentine Quiche because the recipes were once invented elsewhere?
Mountain Dew sold in the US contains 55g of caffiene in a 12-oz serving. That's above average for soft drinks, with the infamous Jolt Cola having the most at 72g per 12-oz drink (ignoring the "energy drinks" and coffee-based drinks on the link above).
Phosphoric acid also reduces the amount of calcium in your bones. Where does all that calcium that you continue to intake in your body go, then? Why, straight to your kidney stones. Check out the segment on this article on "Reduce excessive consumption of calcium."
Well, US drug policy has rarely had anything to do with common sense. Marijuana's primarily illegal due to racism. Ephedra was banned this week based on a handful of deaths in America while tobacco kills approximately 4.8 million people per year world wide and while alcohol contributes to a significant percentage of auto accidents, firearm incidents, rape, and child and spousal abuse.
Of course, I'm a prohibitionist, not an apologist for marijuana legalization. I'm of the opinion that tobacco and caffination of soft drinks should be illegal too. I'd just like to see a little less hypocrisy in our drug laws and our trade fights to push our own drugs on other nations.
Actually, maybe. The classic Mac OS hit its 100 year mark, not its "epoch," which is the beginning of its time keeping period. Technically, the older Carbon APIs that use UTCDateTime also hit their 100 year mark in Mac OS X, but the modern ones that use CFAbsoluteTime or NSDate are based off of January 1st, 2001, and the POSIX APIs are based off of January 1st, 1970. I have NO idea what the kernel uses internally to keep time.
Actually, I spent most of my life thinking that I was a migrane sufferer (like my mother actually is) due to periodic caffiene withdrawl from a widely varied drinking habit of Coke (caf) or ginger ale (decaf). I'd get hours-long, piercing headaches sometimes as often 2-3 times per week from this. I dropped the caffeine, and I no longer have a problem. I now have a headache maybe once every 3 months or so, and they're utterly wussy compared to the headaches of old (unless they're from drinking some caffeine the previous day in a desperate attempt to stay awake).
Now, I'm not saying not to see a doctor. I am saying that people should wait on it to see if headaches persist more than a week after going cold turkey before becoming alarmed. I'm also saying that the potential of being a migrane sufferer is no reason to fear killing your addiction.
Also, as an aside, I don't see much of a reason to stay away from NutraSweet. I've been drinking Caffeine-Free Diet Coke for a while now, and I have no problems with it.
FYI, it's NOT Barq's that doesn't have caffeine -- quite the opposite, Barq's is the only root beer that is sold where I live that IS caffinated. (Naturally, living in Coke country, it's also the ONLY root beer available in restraunts 99% of the time.)
A&W advertises on the can that it's caffeine-free (though A&W is the only company I know that caffinates its cream soda, which is also naturally the easiers cream soda to find). Mug and IBC root beers are also caffiene-free as far as I know.
Interesting article. Thanks for the reference. So no one's saying that acid rain didn't happen, just that it wasn't as disasterous as people thought it would be. I can accept that, though I know we had some nasty problems where I live with damage to property, I'm not aware of any major vegetation die-offs, just that things didn't look healthy. I'm still personally grateful for the Clean Air Act because I no longer have to smell the sulphurous stench of that paper mill, but it's interesting to hear an alternate opinion on the issue. I'll have to look up some info about people trying to debunk Krug to see if they actually can say anything scientific to debunk him instead of the personal attacks that were highlighted by "Reason" magazine.
Via my anecdote, I've shown that my family has lived through it. This is opposed to your empty, unsupported claim that it has been debunked. Put up or shut up -- show me some evidence that it's not real.
Slashdot Mirror
The point that I'm making is that the Communists that Orwell despised and the Fascists are both in the upper 25% of the Authoritarian axis and that their economic leanings (fascist-right or communist-left) are really irrelevant to whether or not "1984" applies well as a warning sign to the rise of Fascism within in our own country. Sure, Orwell may have been writing about the authoritarian left, but most of what he was concerned with applies equally well to the authoritarian right.
For security reasons, you should already have this set, but remember to TURN OFF the Preview Pane if you don't want your messages opened up, parsed, and rendered every time you click on them. This prevents web bugs and other malicious embedded data from being run just as you look through your list of messages.
Of course the left wing in academia got to write the history books after WW II. So "Fascism" is now defined as "extreme right-wing-ism".
Well, you could also look into works written by Fascists before the end of WW2. Benito Mussolini has some interesting things to say about the term which he coined. In many ways, Fascism as a philosophy was a denial of Socialism. The American Heritage dictionary defines Fascism as "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Another point for the right-wing is the complicity of many German companies in the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany. As Hitler sold it to the conspirators, "Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality." In other words, Hitler was of the opinion like Mussolini that democracy led inevitably to socialism and the two must be stopped together.
Similarly the militarists in Japan were heavily in bed with the nation's major monopolies, the zaibatsu. No contract was exclusive, though, and many of the companies had to compete with each other including fending off or losing to newcomers who weren't owned by family dynasties like Nissan. The militarists behind Showa Japan were virulently anti-Communist and rejected international law as a European/American invention. The late '20s and early '30s saw waves of arrests of leftist thinkers in Japan.
There's only one major difference between Facist dictatorships and Communist dictatorships -- does the government own and control all industry (Communist) or is it controlled by a few private citizens who are close friends with the administration (Facist)? The methods of control and the usurping of democracy work the same no matter what econmics lie behind your totalitarian system whether we arrive there through bloody revolution like the Soviets or warmongering, security obsession like the Nazis.
(Yeah, yeah, f--- Godwin's Law. Remove the racist purges and replace zealous worship with apathetic inaction by the masses and you've got a good model of where we could be going if Bush were honestly an evil man instead of being mostly misguided. Read German history. The parallels are terrifying, and yet reassuring in that we did not step off that chasm that presented itself so many times.)
I forgot to mention that whatever part of my brain controls my motor skills in the moring is very good at deciding to put me back into bed and pull the covers over my head while I'm literally screaming at myself in my head, "No! What are you doing? Get the fuck up and... Not the sheets -- oh, dammit. ZZZZZZ..."
Nah. Wouldn't work -- I'm pretty fast despite being only semi-conscious. It'd only get as far as "Hey, Jackass." before getting knocked out and it would eventually be meaningless noise in my brain.
I am tempted, however, to buy one of those puzzle clocks that someone else pointed out, though the idea of trying to wire a game of Simon and an alarm clock together is just so incredibly tempting.
Now I've trained myself pretty well to snooze rather than disable the alarm, but the walk across the room is helpful because it means that even getting up to hit snooze wakes me up a little.
Ah, now this doesn't work for me anymore and hasn't for years. I really noticed it when in one college dorm room, I had to roll-over, hop down from a best that was elevated to mid-rib cage height onto my right leg, tap the snooze button, and hop back up into bed with one leg to continue sleeping for the next 7 minutes. I once did this for over 90 minutes without remembering more than two instances of being awoken. I autopiloted the rest.
In my next place of residence, I slept in a lofted area with my alarm clock below me. I trained myself accidentally to be able to sit up, grab a wooden sword, and stab the button below me without fully gaining consciousness. In my current residence, I once hit the snooze button (by getting up and walking) for over three hours.
It's a little frightening to realize just how much we are capable of without conscious thought.
Much like dieting, light therapy requires a certain discipline that many people don't have. Okay, by many people, I obviously really mean myself. I've never successfully figured out how to deal with the period of time where you're supposed to be in the dark yet not lying in bed trying to sleep. (Getting used to being awake in bed is detrimental to dealing with DSPS. Never lie in bed for more than 15-30 minutes without falling asleep.)
On the other hand, if you can hack it, go for it.
What does Open Source software have to do with our (in the average case) closed-source programming jobs going overseas to people who will write closed-source code for our former companies for less money? Open Source is good. At least if I lose my job to OSS, I know that I have full (and free) access to what replaced me and I know that on the balance the world has been done good by making a quality product available for less and with more eyes capable of scrutinizing it for bugs. If I lose my job to outsourcing, I can see that the customer is unlikely to see a reduction in price (or bugs) for the product, and the market is favoring poorer labor conditions. Overall, the world has not benefitted by my loss, so why should I like it? In this latter case, my principles and my pocketbook are both in agreement that this is a bad thing.
By the way, if you're of the opinion that Slashdot readers are fine with what makes Chinese hardware inexpensive, then you haven't paid attention to the articles on the failure of cheap parts, the hidden costs of poor labor practices, and the environmental impact of computing articles on Slashdot. I'd buy non-Second/Third World goods if I could, but there's honestly many place where you simply can't get an alternative.
(Thanks for the article, though.)
so what do you do again ?
"This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it--we're talking trade balances here--once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here--once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel--once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity--y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery"
(From Snow Crash.)
Technically, the name NT comes from the N-Ten simulator for the Intel i860 RISC processor that the designers of NT were using to test the portability of the project early on. NT was originally to be targetted towards "server" chips and shipped for 4 platforms. Calling NT "new technology" was a later marketting revision, and by the time it shipped NT was stripped of meaning (not an acronym) just like SCO is today.
That's because America's Parmesan production consists of manufactured canned powder.
That's an unfair generalization. Kraft Foods' Parmesean may be canned powder, but not all American cheeses are so cheaply done. Sargento makes an.. adequate mass marketed Parmesean product though still inferior to the original, and you can find cheeses capable of rivalling the original from smaller American dairies if you go into upscale groceries like Whole Foods Market or specialty shops.
Parma itself is famous for its dry cured ham BTW.
Yep, and that's currently upsetting a grocery store chain in Britain right now because of ludicrous restrictions placed on their goods thanks to the recent granting of PDO status to Parma ham. Basically, UK grocers can't use the name "Parma ham" to describe real ham from Parma that was sliced and prepackaged in Britain. Unless its sliced and prepackaged in Parma or sliced for the customer at the counter on request, it can't be called Parma ham, even though it actually comes from there! Now, isn't that just protectionist madness?
Straw man. I'm not defending the assanine position of letting a US company patent Basmati rice and register a trademark on the name. I just dislike the EU's PDO designation system and their attempts to foist their own madness on the rest of the world via the WTO. I'm actually rooting for India to overrule the US's madness in letting RiceTec get its way.
He has said however, that he doesn't recommend Debian because of the free vs non-free issue and instead encourages the use of GNU/LinEx.
This goes to the core of what I and many others don't like about RMS -- he dislikes choice. Debian strongly encourages Free Software. Heck, they were founded on the concept of a Free Software distribution of Linux. However, because Debian offers users the option of non-Free Software, RMS no longer recommends it. In his somewhat Orwellian stance, RMS boldly claims that to be free one must not have the choice to use commercial software. He's so wrapped up in the concept that not sharing your source is an inherently Evil idea that he forgets that true Freedom includes the option to shoot yourself in the foot.
I dislike the polarized, fanatical "either with us or with the terrorists" stance that he takes towards proprietary software. I don't like it in politics, and I don't like it in the philosophy of software development. Plus, I don't like how he has only words of criticism and scorn for those who are making moves towards his stance but have not yet fully committed to it. You're just not good enough unless you're pushing for a total abolition of non-Free Software.
He's certainly more civil nowdays than to openly claim to hate Debian, but he certainly doesn't think it's good enough, and that's pretty much the parent poster's point.
If I wanted a good Monterey Jack cheddar, I'd expect it to be made in the good old USA.
What about cheddar? Apparently, the EU decided that one place is as good as another, so why not Parmesean and others?
It's nothing of the sort. Great cheeses are a product of both the method and the local ecology. The grass that the animals eat, the water that they drink, the type of beasts in the herd all play some part in producing the distinctive flavours associated with classic cheeses.
So, it's a complex recipe. I'm quite well aware of the fact that soil chemistry has an effect on the flavor of cheeses. That does not mean that Parma's soil and grass conditions cannot be replicated anywhere else nor that no one else can use the right kind copper kettles or age the cheese the right amount before shipping. I have had genuine Parmigiano-Reggio, and it is quite good. However, it is not impossible to reproduce elsewhere, which is what the EU is attempting to claim. Unless Parma were willing to give a name for their cheese that others who followed the recipe could use instead of attempting to claim the world monopoly on the ability to make cheeses in it's class, it's nothing more than base trade protectionism and it should stay the hell out of the WTO.
You're clearly the kind of person who thinks that Espresso is a drink that's made with two heaped spoonfuls of Maxwell House instant coffee.
You're clearly the kind of person to make unsubstantiated ad-hominem and straw man attacks against anyone who argues with you. Then again, snobs commonly do.
You're absolutely free to sell as much of your 'American Cheese' in Europe as you like (bwahahahahah.) You just can't call it Camenbert.
It's utter nonsense. The terms for cheese and the like are descriptive of the kind of cheese and its flavor. Are all Parmesean, Muenster, Feta, etc. cheeses that come from Wisconsin to be labelled "American Cheese" or "Wisconsin Cheese?" How would you tell them apart? Better yet, under Europe's naming regime, should every single country that makes Parmesean cheese be forced to come up with an independent name for what is essentially the same product? How would you know what can be substituted in a recipe?
Of course, that's the real goal of the European system -- to force consumers to only associate a European town or region's goods to satisfy their needs. This why the EU doesn't even want American to be able to say "Rocheforte-like" to label their goods. It's pure protectionism and all it does is confuse customers. The protectionism is made far more blatant by the fact that Cheddar cheese isn't protected because it was widely produced outside of its original region in Europe before the law came into effect in 1992 while America's Parmesean production was not considered when Parma, Italy gained European trade protection for its own name. The stench of hypocrisy abounds here.
Naturally, though, I'm sure you don't see it that way, what with all of your claims that American goods are "inferior products." However, the basic fact is that many American-made cheeses are as good or better than the European originals unless your doing extremely finicky gourmet cooking, and the American dairy industry can match demand that regions like Parma, Italy cannot, especially now that the industry seems to be slowly withering on the vine due to a lack of interest in the youth of the area in becoming cheesemakers. Now, however, in Europe if it's not from Parma it has to have a different name. All you've managed to do is make your own goods more expensive for the sake of snobbery in the tradition of landed titles. It's madness.
What's next? Can we no longer use the word Amaretto if the cordial doesn't come from Italy? Can we no longer have Chamomile tea if it wasn't grown from Eurasian stock? Are you genuinely arguing that Basmati rice that wasn't grown on Indian soil cannot have that name?
Cheesemaking is a recipe. Is Europe honestly saying that we cannot have Hamburger Steak or Florentine Quiche because the recipes were once invented elsewhere?
Mountain Dew sold in the US contains 55g of caffiene in a 12-oz serving. That's above average for soft drinks, with the infamous Jolt Cola having the most at 72g per 12-oz drink (ignoring the "energy drinks" and coffee-based drinks on the link above).
Phosphoric acid also reduces the amount of calcium in your bones. Where does all that calcium that you continue to intake in your body go, then? Why, straight to your kidney stones. Check out the segment on this article on "Reduce excessive consumption of calcium."
Well, US drug policy has rarely had anything to do with common sense. Marijuana's primarily illegal due to racism. Ephedra was banned this week based on a handful of deaths in America while tobacco kills approximately 4.8 million people per year world wide and while alcohol contributes to a significant percentage of auto accidents, firearm incidents, rape, and child and spousal abuse.
Of course, I'm a prohibitionist, not an apologist for marijuana legalization. I'm of the opinion that tobacco and caffination of soft drinks should be illegal too. I'd just like to see a little less hypocrisy in our drug laws and our trade fights to push our own drugs on other nations.
Why so you did. My bad -- my reading comprehension skills go down when on only two hours of sleep and without caffeine.
Actually, maybe. The classic Mac OS hit its 100 year mark, not its "epoch," which is the beginning of its time keeping period. Technically, the older Carbon APIs that use UTCDateTime also hit their 100 year mark in Mac OS X, but the modern ones that use CFAbsoluteTime or NSDate are based off of January 1st, 2001, and the POSIX APIs are based off of January 1st, 1970. I have NO idea what the kernel uses internally to keep time.
Actually, I spent most of my life thinking that I was a migrane sufferer (like my mother actually is) due to periodic caffiene withdrawl from a widely varied drinking habit of Coke (caf) or ginger ale (decaf). I'd get hours-long, piercing headaches sometimes as often 2-3 times per week from this. I dropped the caffeine, and I no longer have a problem. I now have a headache maybe once every 3 months or so, and they're utterly wussy compared to the headaches of old (unless they're from drinking some caffeine the previous day in a desperate attempt to stay awake).
Now, I'm not saying not to see a doctor. I am saying that people should wait on it to see if headaches persist more than a week after going cold turkey before becoming alarmed. I'm also saying that the potential of being a migrane sufferer is no reason to fear killing your addiction.
Also, as an aside, I don't see much of a reason to stay away from NutraSweet. I've been drinking Caffeine-Free Diet Coke for a while now, and I have no problems with it.
FYI, it's NOT Barq's that doesn't have caffeine -- quite the opposite, Barq's is the only root beer that is sold where I live that IS caffinated. (Naturally, living in Coke country, it's also the ONLY root beer available in restraunts 99% of the time.)
A&W advertises on the can that it's caffeine-free (though A&W is the only company I know that caffinates its cream soda, which is also naturally the easiers cream soda to find). Mug and IBC root beers are also caffiene-free as far as I know.
Interesting article. Thanks for the reference.
So no one's saying that acid rain didn't happen, just that it wasn't as disasterous as people thought it would be. I can accept that, though I know we had some nasty problems where I live with damage to property, I'm not aware of any major vegetation die-offs, just that things didn't look healthy. I'm still personally grateful for the Clean Air Act because I no longer have to smell the sulphurous stench of that paper mill, but it's interesting to hear an alternate opinion on the issue. I'll have to look up some info about people trying to debunk Krug to see if they actually can say anything scientific to debunk him instead of the personal attacks that were highlighted by "Reason" magazine.
Via my anecdote, I've shown that my family has lived through it.
This is opposed to your empty, unsupported claim that it has been debunked. Put up or shut up -- show me some evidence that it's not real.